Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

1915. "Mrs. William Gibbs McAdoo, nee Eleanor Wilson. Baby McAdoo's open-air bed." The infant with the precarious perch was Ellen McAdoo, born in 1915 to Woodrow Wilson's daughter and Treasury Secretary William McAdoo. At the age of 31 she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills. View full size.

"Wall Street bomb." Aftermath of the explosion that killed dozens of people in New York's financial district on September 16, 1920, when a horse wagon loaded with dynamite and iron sash weights blew up in front of the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street. The attack, which was attributed to Italian anarchists, was never solved. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.

1915. "Mrs. H. Morgan Hill, Dog Show." Another photo from the Washington dog show series of pictures. If you crossed William Wegman and Richard Avedon, this might be the stylistic result. Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size.

Washington circa 1925. "Bureau of Identification, Department of Justice." More thrilling cases from the Bureau's files. This was the forerunner of today's FBI, before they got the F. National Photo Company glass negative. View full size.

July 1863. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. "John L. Burns, the 'old hero of Gettysburg,' with gun and crutches." Burns, born ca. 1793, was a 70-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 when he was wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg, having volunteered his services as a sharpshooter to the Federal Army. He died of pneumonia in 1872. Wet-plate glass negative by Timothy H. O'Sullivan. View full size.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.